Wheat-Pasting in Denver: Edica Pacha

Kenzie Bruce Edica Pacha started wheat-pasting in 1998 as a 21-year-old, while living in a warehouse in what is now RiNo. Pacha, who grew up in Washington Park in Denver and attended Arapahoe High School, has always specialized in photography, specifically double exposures. “We’d run around putting up wheat-pastes and stickers. I wasn’t much of a painter; I’ve always been a photographer, and I would also do collage art,” she says. “I was interested in putting art up on the streets and not knowing who would see it.” She says she’s moved from "using art to cause a ruckus to using it as a tool to communicate a message."
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Kenzie Bruce Pacha moved around after 2001, living in Arizona and California before moving to Boulder in 2007 when her son, Acacia, was five. She opened a clothing shop, Pacha Play, which she runs in addition to her photography and wheat-pasting. Above: "Liss Offering," an installation Pacha wheat-pasted in spring 2018 on The Root of the Hill in Boulder.
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Kenzie Bruce Pacha specializes in photographing women, using her photographs in wheat-pastes as a storytelling platform for women to share their voices and to be seen. In October 2018, Pacha put up the Orenda Project in Martin Acres in Boulder. Above: Pacha touches up one of the pieces.
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Kenzie Bruce "Orenda" refers to the Iroquois term that refers to the place inside each person that has the power to make an impact. “I really feel like everyone has that inside them. This project is my Orenda, and I’m interested in capturing other women’s Orendas."
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Kenzie Bruce Leah Brenner Clack, the founder of And Arts Space in Boulder, helped Pacha find a space for the project; it was also approved by the City of Boulder. Clack and Pacha met while Clack was working at Madelife, a space that serves as both a retail store and gallery. Pacha sold her clothes there but then became more interested in public art, which Clack was, too.
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Kenzie Bruce Most of the women included in the Orenda Project came to help paste their images in October.
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Kenzie Bruce “Getting out of the galleries and into the alleys is something I believe in," Pacha says. "But I do enjoy having legal walls: My art stays up longer, I can put my name on it. I can grow my own creative process. I still do renegade art in Denver, but those don’t stay up as long."
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Kenzie Bruce Clack helped Pacha find a space for a new installation at an abandoned Wendy's at 27th Way and Baseline Road in Boulder. Above: Existing art from 2014 on the south wall of the Wendy's.
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Kenzie Bruce Pacha used four separate prints and “essentially put them up like wallpaper"; she typically uses wallpaper paste on her projects. For printing, she has a large-scale printer at home and uses Xerox paper.
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Kenzie Bruce The image she chose to wheat-paste on the abandoned Wendy’s is an image from Israel; it’s a double exposure of a woman named Hella.
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Kenzie Bruce "Using my art for a message is something I’m craving as I get older. I think having a service component to my art is important. Sometimes I feel like I have to go far away to do something like that,” Pacha says. “Leah’s helped bring that here for me.” Above: Clack, left, helps Pacha position a panel to be pasted.
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Kenzie Bruce Pacha traveled to Israel in July 2018 with the hopes of putting wheat-paste on the West Bank wall.
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Kenzie Bruce On July 1, 2018, Pacha crossed from Israel into Palestine. She had a driver who knew people who manage which arts go up on the West Bank wall.
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Kenzie Bruce Pacha was accompanied by "two other women who wanted to put up art about women" on the wall. The three met men who were putting up art in reference to a Palestinian woman who had recently been shot in Gaza; she was an activist for Palestinian rights. Pacha decided to put her pastes next to that one.
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Kenzie Bruce "To go in and find these incredible people who were open to art and women putting up art about women on this masculine wall...it was this very short, intense period for me," she says.
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Kenzie Bruce Pacha hopes to go back to Israel and Palestine to photograph women.
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Kenzie Bruce Pacha says her work on the West Bank wall felt like a breakthrough, with her commitment to women and their voice in the world.
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Kenzie Bruce One of her wheat-pastes can be seen in Denver behind City, O' City.
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Wheat-Pasting in Denver: Edica Pacha

Denver has embraced street art. There are city grants that celebrate mural-making, intended to enrich communities and prevent graffiti. Crush Walls, RiNo's annual street-art festival, documents much of that neighborhood's wall art for a year, going so far as to map out each mural or installation by intersection. With the rise in love for murals, where does that leave other, non-mural forms of street art?

Wheat-pasting, the act of using a liquid adhesive to put up artworks or posters, falls in that "other" category. The art form, largely popularized by such artists as Shepard Fairey, is accessible; the paste can be made at home, or wallpaper paste can be used. Wheat-pasting has roots in graffiti and often resides in the same gray area as that medium. Edica Pacha is a Boulder-based artist who started wheat-pasting in Denver in 1998 when she lived in an arts warehouse, Soulciety, with five other artists on Brighton Boulevard. Here's a look at her approach, the second in a series on wheat-pasting in Denver.

Denver has embraced street art. There are city grants that celebrate mural-making, intended to enrich communities and prevent graffiti. Crush Walls, RiNo's annual street-art festival, documents much of that neighborhood's wall art for a year, going so far as to map out each mural or installation by intersection. With the rise in love for murals, where does that leave other, non-mural forms of street art?

Wheat-pasting, the act of using a liquid adhesive to put up artworks or posters, falls in that "other" category. The art form, largely popularized by such artists as Shepard Fairey, is accessible; the paste can be made at home, or wallpaper paste can be used. Wheat-pasting has roots in graffiti and often resides in the same gray area as that medium. Edica Pacha is a Boulder-based artist who started wheat-pasting in Denver in 1998 when she lived in an arts warehouse, Soulciety, with five other artists on Brighton Boulevard. Here's a look at her approach, the second in a series on wheat-pasting in Denver.

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